2025 Survey Results: financial satisfaction and labour status, comparison to 2023

In both the 2023 and 2025 surveys, we asked participants who list as current students to rate their satisfaction with their financial situation on a 5-point scale (very unsatisfied, unsatisfied, neutral, satisfied, very satisfied). This blog post explores the results around this question. Read a discussion of the 2023 results here. The short synopsis is this: financial satisfaction has improved overall from the 2023 survey to the 2025 survey. Financial satisfaction is correlated with self-reported family socioeconomic status (SES). Financial satisfaction is not correlated with whether or not graduate students are unionized. However, the financial (dis)satisfaction of students enrolled in 2023 is correlated with whether a notable strike action has happened in recent years. The financial satisfaction of students enrolled in 2025 is no longer correlated with whether they have had a strike.

Because we are only tracking people's PhD institution, I restrict our attention to participants who list as "currently enrolled" in a PhD program. If we interpret the satisfaction scale as an interval scale where 1=very unsatisfied and 5=very satisfied, participants who list as current students in the 2023 survey have a mean satisfaction of 2.96 (n=336). Qualitatively, roughly 15% are very unsatisfied, 24% unsatisfied, 20% neutral, 30% satisfied, and 11% very satisfied. By contrast, participants who list as current students in the 2025 survey have a mean satisfaction of 3.36 (n=455). Qualitatively, roughly 8% are very unsatisfied, 16% unsatisfied, 22% neutral, 36% satisfied, 17% very satisfied. (They do not add to 100% due to rounding error.)

As a part of the demographic survey, we asked every participant the question "What was your family's socioeconomic status (SES) growing up?" on a 5-point scale (lower, lower-middle, middle, upper-middle, upper). There is no significant change between participants who list as enrolled in 2023 versus those enrolled in 2025, which is not surprising given that many of the participants are likely the same people. If we interpret the scale as an interval scale where 1=lower and 5=upper, the mean SES for 2023 students is 2.86 (n=325); the mean SES for 2025 students is 2.95 (n=429).

To see if financial satisfaction measures anything at all, I asked if financial satisfaction is correlated with self-reported family SES. I found positive correlations between the two variables in both the 2023-current students (Pearson's r≈0.208, p<0.001) and 2025-current students datasets (Pearson's r≈0.214, p<0.001). Pearson's r ranges from -1 (perfect negative correlation) to +1 (perfect positive correlation). In the social sciences, an r that is between 0.1 and 0.3 is considered as a weak correlation. Again, it is not surprising that SES positively correlates with financial satisfaction, but the results help establish a level of ecological validity for the question about financial satisfaction. We also asked current students to report their annual gross income, including from sources such as gifts. Participants who are current students in 2025 report a mean gross income of 35.5k USD (media=33k, standard deviation=14k, n=409). This is an increase from 2023 (mean is 30k USD, median is 29k USD, n=288). The inflation rate during that period is roughly 3% in the US. Participants who do not live in the US are asked to convert their income into USD. Note that there may be conversion errors as well as errors associated with estimating non-stable sources of income such as gifts.

Using this Wikipedia page, we determined whether graduate students in different programs are unionized. Programs that are not listed on the page (primarily non-US programs) are excluded in the following analysis. Using this link from BestColleges, we determined whether a graduate program has had a notable strike action in recent years. Note that this information is very difficult to find and we welcome alternative sources of data or corrections.

Whether or not a graduate program is unionized does not correlate with financial satisfaction in either the 2023 or the 2025 surveys. However, financial satisfaction negatively correlates with recent strike action for the 2023 survey (mean financial satisfaction of unionized≈2.95; mean financial satisfaction of non-unionized≈3.20 Pearson's r≈0.17, p<0.01) but not the 2025 survey (mean financial satisfaction of unionized≈3.39; mean financial satisfaction of non-unionized≈3.45). One possible explanation is that the financial dissatisfaction drove the unions to strike, though note that some of the recorded strikes happened before 2023. Another possible explanation is that, during and immediately after strike action, there is greater awareness of the financial situation in general. Yet another possible explanation is that it takes time for benefits gained through strike actions to take effect.

Whether or not the graduate students are unionized is not correlated with whether a current student is likely to recommend the program in both the 2023 and the 2025 surveys. For alumni, whether or not there is a union in one's graduate school is not correlated with what kind of job one holds after graduation.